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Monday, August 2, 2010

THUN-DER (ah-ah-ah-ahh-ah-ah-ahh-ah)

This morning at approximately 1:15am, Colorado Springs peed its pants.

I’m pretty sure I know what happened. The largest lightning bolt in the history of lightning bolts struck my entire block (accompanied by a proportionately deafening thunderclap), causing every man, woman and child to shoot straight up in their beds and cling tightly to whatever was within reach, even if that meant leaving finger-shaped gouge marks in the arm of the poor guy lying next to them. I’m not referring to any one specific case; I’m just saying...it could have happened.

If you’d like to know what it sounded like, find a large metal pot. Place it securely over your head (making sure it completely covers both ears) and then ask the roid-raginest man you can find to pound it with a metal serving spoon.

Thunder always seems to be louder here, I assume because it echoes off the mountains, but this was the worst I've encountered by far. I couldn’t go back to sleep because I knew that at any moment, I was going to receive a phone call notifying me that Sarah’s house was on fire and she was trapped on the top floor. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that we were in the middle of a monsoon, making the chances of anyone’s house being on fire extremely thin. Apparently all logical thought goes out the window once I’ve entered crisis mode. (Kinda like how every time I hear sirens, I have to fight the urge to call Gary and make sure he's not dying in a terrible car accident. I say I have to fight it because I used to actually call him every time and he threatened to have my phone disconnected.)

Eventually I did get back to sleep, but it was not a peaceful one. I dreamed that a tree had fallen on our house and that parts of the trunk and branches were visible through the gaping hole in our kitchen ceiling, and I was terrified because we don’t have renters’ insurance. I also dreamed I was being chased by a giant hammer. I feel like those are related somehow, but I can’t quite put my finger on it...